The Waterbury Hospital PD experiment

摘要

A medium-sized community and teaching hospital in Connecticut, Waterbury is licensed for 357 beds. Each year it cares for approximately 15,000 inpatients, treats more than 21,000 people in its outpatient medical clinics and handles more than 56,000 emergency department visits. In its Xpress Care facility, for non-emergent injuries and illnesses, staff treat over 540 patients per month. Its behavioural health centre, one of the largest in the region, logs more than 50,000 outpatient visits per yean Meanwhile, its one-day surgery department serves approximately 6,000 area residents annually, including adults and children. DrTony Cusano, an attending physician at the hospital (and assistant clinical professor at Yale) noticed that patients were complaining about the number of medications they had to take following hospital visits.